Common Suggestions and Feedback (with Dev Responses)

THIS THREAD IS FOR YOU TO READ, NOT ONLY FOR POSTING YOUR OWN SUGGESTIONS. DEVS WILL PROBABLY NOT READ THIS THREAD.That said, you have every right to correct me if I've made a mistake or forgotten an obvious common suggestion!

Here I'm going to post a list of common suggestions, and as we get/find dev responses to the various issues, we can post links and quotes here and I'll update accordingly. By doing this we'll be able to minimize the spamming of the same suggestions over and over when Open Beta comes.

Iv actualy made a giant Mortal Combat blood impact for on hit for a microtransaction already. However the default one will get larger.

3. Add Doors and Traps.
I talked to Chris privately about this. He said that the only reason they're not in the game now is because they simply haven't had time to add them in a meaningful way. The extra death effects of the Flame Hellions and Tar Zombies are showing that this is starting to be addressed.

Spoiler

I do not want to share a PM between me and Chris because it seems impolite, but the above is what I was told.

4. Kicking Pots should be faster.
Right now when you play as the Shadow, you kick the pots rather quickly. All classes will be able to kick at this speed fairly soon.
Here is the post

This will change so that all stomp animations are approximately the same fast speed that the Shadow stomp animations use.

5. Add glow when you highlight an exit/entrance, instead of just whiteness.
According to Charan, our moderator, he has spoken to Chris (1000 blessings upon him), and this is considered a "quality of life fix that will eventually see fruition. That's good news!

6. Add the ability to change character appearance/gender.
Erik of GGG has finally stated (specifically in regard to gender): "This will be in the cash shop eventually."

7. Animations should be better. They're too stiff.
Part of the problem here comes from having to rig the animations manually instead of using motion capture. That being said, GGG has stated that many animations will be changed eventually.http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/35035

8. There is no trade screen.
Not only will there soon be a trade screen, but later there will also be the ability to trade from your browser and advertise your items to your friends via a "public stash tab" which can be bought in cash shop.
From the Beta Manifesto:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/20050

We have large trade-system plans that are underway. Although we haven't discussed the specifics publicly yet, we've mentioned that it's integrated with the website. Our plan is that people can trade items without having to load the game client (good luck getting any work or study done now!)

Because this feature is taking a while, we may consider implementing a simple player-player trade within an instance as an interim measure (but this would be wasted development time as it'd be replaced by the proper system when that is ready).

Edit (May 21): This information still represents our view of this issue. The simpler trade screen is coming soon as a stopgap measure.

Actually the trade screen is scheduled for an upcoming patch.

9. Combat isn't as smooth as X game.
GGG is taking action to try to smooth out problems with things like running and casting, and fixing animations so that charaacters don't have to go back to their resting position before they can cast again.http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/35035

Spoiler

There are several Dev posts in here, so check it out for yourself. I don't want to post 3 quotes under one section.

10. Add floating numbers to give damage feedback.
GGG has stated that this will probably happen sooner or later, and there will be several options to choose from in terms of how many numbers you want to appear.

Floating combat text(FCT) is something that a lot of people 1. enjoy and 2. expect from a game in this genre. There are also definitely people who don't like it, and would never choose to have it enabled.

However, we're trying to appeal to as wide a community as possible, so it's quite likely that POE will eventually have three different options for FCT. The first would be the default, which is "Off". The second would be a version that merely shows your critical hits as FCT, possibly with the additional note of "Critical". The third option would be complete FCT, that shows all damage dealt, as well as misses and blocks.

There are valid arguments for all three types of FCT, so we'll try to arrive at something that pleases the most people. Hope that makes you guys happy!

11. The game needs to be zoomed out more.
At the moment, zooming out more would damage the quality of the textures and shadows. While the game is zoomed in a bit more than some of its competitors, it is more than playable. Zooming out more, however, would mean that ranged players could not attack as far as they can see. The only people for whom this is a serious problem right seems to be people with old monitors (CRT) and bad resolution.http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/32342

I haven't read all the posts in this thread, so please treat my reply only as a general response to the camera zoom issue - I'm sorry if I don't address specific comments that I may have missed.

There are performance concerns with allowing the camera to zoom out further. It's an "n squared" relationship between the zoom distance and the number of objects that the game has to render. We're already looking into ways to make the game faster on old machines, and zooming it out further would undermine this. In the last year we've zoomed it out by 5% and 10% (after putting a lot of work into improving performance so that we have room to do this).

We've balanced our ranged combat around the distance that players are able to attack. If we zoomed it out further, you would not be able to attack monsters that you see on the edge of the screen. There are also issues with the distance that objects are serialised to you from the server, so increasing zoom distance would increase bandwidth consumption and (marginally) server load.

I understand that players abusing strange aspect ratios are able to see further than others, and this is something we're looking for a good solution for.

I'd like to support further zoom distance in the future, but there are a whole lot of big things that will have to change before we can do that - ranging from performance to balance concerns. This is not something we're able to just change with a simple number.

We recently compared our zoom level to other popular Action RPGs. When taking into account field of view and relative run speed, it wasn't too dissimilar.

12. Please add gold as a currency.
This isn't going to happen, ever. Most players so far are really loving the currency system, although it's safe to say that things are going to change from time to time.http://www.pathofexile.com/news/dev-diary/

13. Please make this game Pay2Win (add XP boosts or combat pets or whatever)
Also not going to happen. GGG believes in a policy called "ethical microtransactions". By this, they mean simply that all of their purchases will not give any combat advantages to one player over another. The only exception might be stash tabs, but these were added to discourage people from creating multiple accounts just for the stash tabs.

17. Increase the inventory space/increase town portal scroll drops.
Right now the inventory space is working as intended. If it were made any larger, then there would be more magic items and rares to sell, increasing the number of orbs of alteration you'd get, or increasing the number of rares on the trade market. This would create problems with the way the economy is designed. It's intended that you ration your town portal scrolls, but later in the game they will drop far more frequently (and so will rares).

18. Add charms to the game.
No dev response yet, however I think it won't happen because the inventory is already so precious.
EDIT: Rhys has said this is a no-go because they don't like items just sitting in your inventory taking up space.

19. You should be able to name your stash tabs.
This is happening! However, it will cost cash shop credits. You will also be able to buy Public Stash Tabs for trade purposes, and presumably name those, too.

20. Ranged seems better than Melee right now.
Balance will be an ongoing process for quite some time, I'm sure, especially when PvP is added. For now, use skills with melee fighters like whirling blades, leap slam, shield ram (or whatever it's called), and flicker strike to close the gap on your enemies.

21. Additional chat options/improved chat UI and functionality.
This is planned for the future. There will be far more options with chat, and little annoyances will be cleaned up. It's in the beta manifesto, I believe.

22. Add more acts.Chris has said that they hope to add a new act every 6-9 months, though in another place he said 9-12. The point seems to be though that we'll have new acts and major expansions every year.
SOURCE: Various interviews with Chris on youtube.

23. Add an in-game clock (with server time and local time)
Rhys, in a direct response to this thread, has addressed this. He more or less says that he sees no reason why this couldn't happen eventually.

24. Improved character card.
Coming in the future! There will be lots of detailed calculations and it should hopefully appear less cluttered.

Spoiler

See beta manifesto!

25. Add a guild system.

Spoiler

Chris has said that he plans to add guilds, though probably as part of an expansion. He talks about this in many interviews.

26. Add more options for keybindings aside from letters and numbers on the keyboard. I want to remap my Middle Mouse button.
Eventually it seems any key or mouse but will be usable, but we're not there yet.http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/8
Here's one post about that from Chris:

28. Add a tutorial.
I'm not sure how this is going to be fixed, but I would think that there would be more tutorializing in the open beta, especially for the skills and currency. GGG has stated here and there that they are looking into ways to have a tutorial that isn't invasive for those who don't need it, but informative for those who do. No details yet.

29. I want an offline mode.
The day this happens is the day we have hacked characters and items. The only way to keep the game economy secure is to keep it 100% online. Allowing the game to run locally would allow the processes of the game to be accessed by anyone, allowing them to "crack the code" and find ways to add hacked items and characters to the online version. This would ruin the ladder, the economy, and the experience for everyone.

The solo play is still played on our online servers which means there are no hacked characters because the data is stored serverside.

30. Add another way to respec aside from quests and orbs of regret.I don't think this is likely. Paying for respecs in the cash shop would be Pay2Win, and GGG has stated that they hate offering full respecs because they want you to feel some permanence to your choices. That said, with the help of trade, it shouldn't take all that long to farm enough orbs of regret to fundamentally alter your build.

31. Make this game available on Steam.
Rhys has said that they would love to have PoE available on Steam, but it's more complicated than we think for this type of game. It may happen after Open Beta or Full Release, but first let's get a finished game, right?

32. Make an easier way to move items to the sell screen/stash.THIS HAS BEEN ADDED. Now, to move things to your stash or sell screen, please use CTRL Click. Alt Click now links items to the chat window.

33. Switch to the personalized loot system.
This game is trying to find an alternative to the handholding loot system in D3. Many people like FFA loot, including GGG, but it has been acknowledged that ranged players are at an advantage where loot is concerned because they're so far from it when it drops. To fix this, the loot timer has been added. So far this system seems promising, but the time on the timer may be lengthened in the future (due to the results of a poll).

34. Add a buff timer for health/mana flasks.
The reason that this wouldn't work would be because the "time" of a health/mana flask-related buff depends on how much health you have. If you're almost full on health and you use the potion, the effect only lasts for a brief moment. An alternative might be to introduce a glowing effect to flasks while they are active.

36. Add an "Inspect" option when you click another player character.
I don't think this will happen because it is supposed to be your choice whether or not you want to divulge the details of your gear and build, as far as I understand.

36. Give more information about a gem's stats at this level and next level so we can make an educated choice whether or not to level them up.
This is planned!

37. Introduce a Gem Sink to the game.
This is also planned. There will be more ways to get rid of your useless gems in the future.

38. Higher level items shouldn't look the same as lower level items.
This will be fixed in the long term, but making item graphics takes some time. There is a dev quote on this but I can't find it right now. When I do, I'll post it here.

39. Graphics settings should have more options to make the game run smoothly on older PCs.

We wont ever have an option to disable weather effects as it removes the atmosphere of the environments.

40. Add a slot for pants in the inventory.
Too much work, too little benefit other than aesthetics, would have to rebalance the game based on all the new stats you'd get from a pants slot. Hope for pants in the cash shop.

However we will be adding many graphical options in the future so you can set your settings to your pcs needs.

So particle quality , texture quality , model quality and so on.

Also currently im missing a material option to make the rain and enviro effects less laggy. This will hopefully be there before open beta. Otherwise im sure there will be many more people who will be pretty mad at low fps's in rainy/windy areas.

41. Add a pause button.
Are you aware this game is always online? It might be possible for when you're alone, but I haven't seen the devs say anything about it. You'd think they'd have added it by now if it were going to happen.

42. Get rid of/change the death penalty.
Devs haven't commented on this in a while. I believe that they're happy with the current system given that there are not any alternatives that they'd prefer. Corpse runs are tedious and also easy to abuse if you have a teammate in that instance. There is no gold to deduct. For now experience seems to be the best way.

43. Make a carebear league.
GGG has stated that no future leagues, including custom leagues, will be easier than default. All future leagues to be added will be more difficult, not less. Making an easier league would greatly decrease the number of players in default which could lead to a lot of economy/community interaction issues.
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Rhys from GGG posted responses to several of these points! Check out his response here:

5. Add glow when you highlight an exit/entrance, instead of just whiteness.

We would love to improve from the solid-white effect, but it's pretty low priority at the moment.

"

6. Add the ability to change character appearance/gender.
... skins and appearance customization is planned for the medium-term in the cash shop.

Chris has stated that gender options are too expensive to happen anytime soon.

"

10. Add floating numbers to give damage feedback.

Staff opinions are divided on this issue... Chris makes the ultimate decision, though.

"

16. Please add an endless dungeon!

The Maelström of Chaos is an endless dungeon; it just doesn't tell you what "floor" you're on.

"

18. Add charms to the game.

We are opposed to having items that just sit in your inventory taking up space and cannot be actively used or equipped.

"

23. Add an in-game clock (with server time and local time)

I don't see why we can't have a local clock that can be toggled on/off.

That's it for now, if you think of others please post them below. Obviously right now I don't have any exact quotes from GGG or links to their posts, so this is very much a WIP, and if I've made any mistakes, please correct them for me!